


soundwaves of gold

by homovikings



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Derek Hale, Anxiety, Derek is a Good Alpha, Derek is trying his hardest but things are hard ok, Established Relationship, Future Fic, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-14
Updated: 2017-11-14
Packaged: 2019-02-02 07:25:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12722193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/homovikings/pseuds/homovikings
Summary: See, Stiles is no idiot. He’s been in love with Derek since he was sixteen years old and at twenty-three, now, he’s pretty confident that he knows a thing or two about a thing or two, and he knows a thing or two or three or five or six hundred about Derek masking his emotions because he is Stiles. He does his freaking research.





	soundwaves of gold

**Author's Note:**

> omg ok i have been playing sterek on the sims 4 for like 3 days straight now and it's giving me so many ridic ideas

Derek _tries_ , is the thing.

He spends three months as a mailman technician, making small talk and performing his perfunctory duties, before he suffers a mild breakdown (a little more than mild, to be honest) over the whole forced-to-socialize-with-people-he-doesn’t-know shindig.

_Then_ he spends a week or so _sulking_ , refusing to make eye contact with Stiles because he feels so fucking bad about failing at, in his words, such a ‘tedious job’, and it isn’t until Stiles throws three sponges at Derek that he pauses to listen to reason.

So— _so_ , after that, after the Great Sponge Incident of 2017, Stiles and Derek sit down and have a mighty long talk.

See, Stiles is no idiot. He’s been in love with Derek since he was goddamn sixteen years old and at twenty-three, now, he’s pretty confident that he knows a thing or two about a thing or two, and he _knows_ a thing or two or _three_ or five or six _hundred_ about Derek masking his emotions because he is goddamn _Stiles_. He does his fucking research.

And all of his research points to one thing: this? this thing Derek is doing right now? It’s not working out.

Stiles wonders, briefly, how Derek would have fared had his family lived, and he nips that thought process in the bud as soon as it emerges. He doesn’t care about the hypotheticals, just the actualities, and the actualities—the reality—of the situation is that Derek is—is that it’s—it’s _too soon_. It’s too fucking much way too fucking soon.

(Stiles brings this up, once, in a conversation, and Derek absolutely _revolts_ ; he yells about being _twenty-eight, Stiles_ , about how he’s _more_ than ready to face anything, he’s killed countless supernatural beings, he’s faced countless trials and tribulations, and Stiles nods and hmm-hmm’s in all the right places until Derek pauses and then Stiles goes the fuck _off_.

Stiles is many things. Stubborn is one of them.)

See, every Wednesday morning at 10:45 AM, Derek presses a kiss to Stiles’s temple and leaves to go to therapy with Ms. Morrell. He comes home around 12, 12:05 PM. Stiles holds opens his arms and Derek collapses against his chest, usually grunts into his collarbone, as all of the tension seeps from his body.

After a few minutes, Derek tentatively broaches some of things he had discussed with her—behavioral adjustments, for one thing, things Derek will need help changing (such as Boyd’s insistence they have a grand bonfire during serious pack meetings) and Stiles nods, squeezes Derek tighter—and then Derek pulls away to go and exercise the excess anxiety out of his system.

(It isn’t until later that night, after the two of them lay tangled together, that Derek haltingly confesses he’s still discomfited by fire; that every time he looks at flames, he’s reminded of what he caused, of what he couldn’t stop.)

Still, it’s—it’s a _thing_ , whether they want it to be or not, that Derek cannot hold a steady job. He fucking tries, he does, and Stiles reminds him of that every _single_ time that Derek comes home with that look on his face that reads _I can’t do this_ (“You can, you can, Der,” Stiles murmurs into Derek’s neck, holding him tightly.).

It’s too much, for him—nine, ten hours a day socializing with people he barely knows, taking orders from people that (and the Alpha in him _snarls_ at this) are below him—and then all it takes is one distressed, hesitant look from Derek during dinner one night for Stiles to snap.

(“This isn’t _working!_ ” Stiles yells, dropping his knife and fork with a clatter onto his plate. Upon seeing Derek’s stricken expression, he adds, “You can’t—it’s _okay_ , Derek, it’s okay that you can’t—that you can’t have a steady job, _fuck_ , most days I want to call off work and—and it’s fucking _hard_ , y’know, and I’m not even dealing with half the shit that—it’s just—I fucking _get it_ and _please_ stop _pushing_ yourself to be fucking—to be—”

“Stiles,” Derek breathes, his dinner forgotten.

“I’d rather be struggling financially than be—than be _stable-ish_ but knowing that you’re miserable,” Stiles finishes, staring at Derek with this fucking earnest expression that completely eviscerates any sort of argument from his system.)

The next day, Stiles kisses Derek urgently before he leaves for work; he had gathered enough evidence to arrest someone with probable cause and Derek wished him luck before he left.

Derek spends his time—not _dawdling_ , per se, but… flitting from thing-to-thing. He scrubs the bathroom down twice and then tidies up the kitchen, makes sure the floor is immaculate and then takes to obsessively dusting every single surface, when he chances a look at their coffee table.

He remembers the day they bought it—Derek was driving Stiles, seventeen at the time, home, when he cruised past a garage sale. Stiles, with his helter-skelter attention span, immediately yelled at Derek to pull over and, because Derek is weak in the eyes of his mate, he did just that. Stiles promptly ran towards the garage sale and poked and prodded at every single item (“Why are they selling a deformed slinkie? Did you ever have slinkies? I had one but I would stretch them out too far because I would wanna see if they would go as long as my arms and they always would and then they wouldn’t go down my stairs and then I’d throw them and the neighborhood dog found it and—”

“ _Stiles_ ,” Derek would always interject, patiently but with enough annoyance that Stiles would bark a laugh.

“Sorry, I just—holy _fuck_ look at that coffee table, is that fucking _Old Norse_ inscribed on its side—”)

and now, staring at it, Derek is overwhelmed with nostalgia, not just for that moment, but—but for all the times _since_ , where Stiles would shed a new perspective on something completely innocuous in Derek’s eyes and then they’d take it home because it felt so _right_.

Still, now, with Stiles at work, Derek feels restless and it isn’t long until he picks up the damn coffee table and brings it to their garage. He had built a workbench about half a year prior and it’s upon there that he props the coffee table, rubbing his hands over it like he’s never seen it before: he gets a feel for it, thinking, all the while, of all the adjustments that need be made, and then he pulls back and grabs his woodworking apron from its spot hanging on a hook on the wall.

Derek sands it down, first, takes his time with manual sandpaper rather than his sanding machine and takes pleasure in the monotonous sounds of the act. It’s just enough physical labor mixed with ASMR for Derek to feel his muscles relaxing the slightest bit. He waits an hour or so before smoothing it over with wax and then, as that settles, goes and vacuums the house.

He feels at ease and it isn’t until he goes and checks on the coffee table that he recalls why.

(He’s six and he runs into the garage to escape Laura’s incessant tickling, whereupon he stumbles upon his father and Uncle Peter bent over a block of wood.

They realize he’s there immediately, of course, and Uncle Peter shoots Derek a crooked grin and beckons him closer. Derek feels warm as he acquiesces.

Derek’s father bends down and smiles, so much joy in his eyes, as he tells Derek, “Keep this between the three of us,” miming that he’s zipping his lips shut, “but your uncle Peter and I are planning on building a cradle for your new baby sister.”

Derek can’t mask his shock. “ _Sister_?” he whispers, looking from Uncle Peter to his dad and back again.

“Shh,” Uncle Peter reprimands, smiling. He leans down and ruffles Derek’s hair. “Are you going to gawk or are you going to help us, little man?”

Derek screws his face up very, very seriously. He scowls at both of them when they giggle.)

He picks the bottle of Pledge off the table.

* * *

“You—you _did_ this?” Stiles asks, for what feels like the hundredth time.

He’s running his hands—those fucking _hands_ —over the coffee table, his face set into this wondrous expression that Derek can’t even begin to dissect. His dinner sits forgotten in the kitchen.

“It’s really nothing,” Derek grumbles. He crosses his arms, feels self-conscious.

“But it’s like it’s brand new!” Stiles protests. He slumps forward and lays his upper body against the wood. “I feel like a whole new man right now!”

Despite his best efforts, Derek snorts. He throws a sock at Stiles. “It’s only—”

“—you’re good at this,” Stiles interrupts. He sits up suddenly, his gaze going from admiring to calculative in a millisecond. “Not, just, like, I’m not just saying that because we’re dating, or anything, I’m not biased—I mean, maybe I am, but at the same time I don’t think I’d be biased enough to, like, lie about a table, but—you’re _really_ good at this.” Stiles looks up, stares at Derek. “And this isn’t the first time you’ve been really good at working with wood.”

Derek isn’t sure what to say; just looks at Stiles and shrugs, mumbles, “Is that a sex joke.”

“Dude, don’t even!” Stiles stands up and points at Derek, offended. “I have a handcrafted Derek Hale official _bunny_ and _dragon_ sitting on a shelf in my bedroom, okay, and the detail in both of those are fucking ridiculous, mind you, and I’m just, like—” he breaks off and kneels down to look at the underside of the coffee table. “Yeah! See, look, there was this huge fucking ugly ass mismatched piece of wood here and you fixed that to where it looks brand spanking new! Dude, you—”

Derek drops his head into his hands.

“No! None of that!” Suddenly, Stiles is in front of him, prying his hands from his face so he can stare into Derek’s eyes. “Derek,” he begins, “this is—this is good, this is _great_ , this is something, you know?”

“ _This_ is a coffee table, Stiles,” Derek grumbles. “It only took an hour to fix up.”

“ _Shut up_ ,” Stiles breathes. It sounds less like _shut up!_ than it does _are you serious right now_ and that’s the only reason Derek doesn’t balk defensively. “Derek! My guy! My love! My moon and stars!”

Derek pouts.

“Have you ever considered maybe this is _your calling?_ ”

Derek blinks. “…wood,” he says. “Wood, is my calling?”

Stiles barks a laugh and jabs his elbow into Derek’s side. “Well, we all know you’re great at handling _wood_ ,” he says with a wink. “But, yeah, like, seriously—you’re freakishly good at this shit and it calms you down andIthinkyoushouldstopfeelinglikeshitfornothavingajobandfocusinsteadonthisstuff,” Stiles finishes at breakneck speed, a flush spreading from his cheeks down into his chest.

See, Derek—he doesn’t need to take any time to parse out what the fuck Stiles just rambled; perks of being a werewolf, and all, but he _does_ take a moment to… digest.

As he digests, though, Stiles grows steadily redder, as if he’s never encountered an awkward or tense moment with Derek before (it’s really fucking adorable, Derek thinks, how Stiles always _blushes_ ). Eventually he takes pity on him and says, “So, you think—you think I should just _build_ stuff.”

Stiles nods vigorously. “Just like the Amish in Philadelphia,” he affirms. “I knew this girl, once, she was on Rumpsringa, and she told me a _shitload_ about handmade furniture and shit and was like, it sells so good! and I mean we have enough pretentious assholes in this neighborhood who’d want to buy legit furniture from _Derek Hale_ and—”

Derek closes his eyes. Counts to five—he’s supposed to count to ten, but Stiles’s voice is too attractive to ignore—and then re-opens his eyes, says, “Alright.”

“—I remember this time I was on Amtrak and there was a—what? Did you—uh, yeah? Alright, you said?”

Derek balls another sock in his hand. Stiles, the fool, seems unthreatened. “I said okay,” Derek repeats. “I—it’s—I enjoy it,” he finishes lamely, staring at the ground.

It’s only seconds later that Stiles is cupping Derek’s cheeks in two warm palms, smiling so sweetly that Derek thinks he might develop werewolf diabetes. “Okay, cool,” Stiles says. “You know, Lydia owns a bakery and I’m sure she’d be totally down to, like, give us tips and shit on how to Venture Forth in selling your christened merchandise.”

Derek groans and drops his forehead to Stiles’s shoulder. Stiles snickers, the devil, and rests his hand on Derek’s nape.

“I’m _not_ baking,” Derek says decisively, and Stiles laughs and pulls back to kiss him.

**Author's Note:**

> i can be found on twitter [here](https://twitter.com/homovikings/) and on tumblr [here](http://balderodinson.tumblr.com/)!! <3


End file.
